How generally available is 7 Wonders: Cities right now? I saw the French publisher release, then the GenCon, and then some sites started listing the game before Asmodee's September release date.

So I preordered my copy through Thought Hammer months ago. Until tonight, TH listed end of August as the release date, but now it is listed as backordered (30 days). CSI and Funagain seem to have available copies. Does this sometimes happen where one or two retailers don't get their product when expected? Or, perhaps more likely, did some of these other sites get GenCon copies that they made available?

Not mad at anyone or anything. Ordered with TH several times and will do so again, but this is the first time this sort of thing has happened where what looked like a game that was released has not been made available yet.

Thought Hammer had an initial shipment that was smaller then thier forecast. Therefore all excess orders after the inital stock have been pushed out to lead-time (30 days), or

Thier ordering system isn't as advanced enough to allocate/reserve to promise. They told everyone "End of August", and after that shipment came in and went, everyeone left is "Next Shipment: 30 days time". Don't be too harsh though .. good allocate/reserve to promise is very hard to run and not really necessary in this market.

I have three FLGS that I visit on a regular basis. Two of them had it in stock a few days after Gencon. The third one did not know it had released but was still able to order copies and get them shelved within a few days. It sounds like a problem with just your store (or their distributor).